


An Almost Image of Happiness

by bug_from_space



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Marriage, Past Relationship(s), Seasons, Time Skips, Translation Available, Unhealthy Relationships, Weddings, abuse of parentheses, almost, kind of, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 18:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bug_from_space/pseuds/bug_from_space
Summary: Albus and Gellert through the seasons (or, four times they nearly wed.)Minor edits 21/2/2019





	An Almost Image of Happiness

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Почти картина счастья](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17227727) by [Galan_Rumos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galan_Rumos/pseuds/Galan_Rumos)
  * Inspired by [What Could Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/617827) by [heartslogos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos). 



> Okay, so heartslogos is an excellent writer, like truly, one of the most talented people I've ever read, and I read her 'What could Be', and I got inspired to do something for these two. So here? As always, I don't own any of this, if I did, Depp wouldn't be Gellert. And there would be Grindeldore.

_Summer, 1899_

‘We would have been married in Summer’, Albus thinks, as he tosses another letter of Gellert’s into the fire (to Gellert, or from Gellert, it doesn’t matter, all of the are Gellert’s). 

It would have happened in mid-summer, when the sun was at its highest, and the world seemed soft with it’s familiar quality of fantasy.When the yellow haze that covered everything made it seem like a dream. Everything was clear, yet too bright to ever focus on for more than a few seconds. Like when they met, Albus muses as another letter becomes ashes. 

Gellert who was brilliant and sparkling (and precisely like Icarus), who was perfect, just so long as he didn’t question the facade. Perhaps they would have done it next year, at the turn of the century. When everything was new and stunning. When the lights of Summer hid any doubts (when everything is illuminated. When everything is too illuminated).

It was a bit like being a faerie bride (everything you could possibly want, just so long as you never look at anything too long or too closely). But Albus looked too closely, stared too long at the things that weren’t meant to be stared at. Yes, Albus thinks, yes, they would have been married in the Summer. If only he hadn’t been too human, if only he’d said yes to what could have been forever.

_Spring, 1908_

There was the name printed in black and white on the cover of the Daily Prophet: Gellert Grindelwald. He’d succeeded in taking the wand then, Gregorovich would never see it again, Albus thought. It hadn’t even been a decade since they had met-loved. It would have been so easy to go to him, leave the school behind, and join him. The Greater Good: their plans, their ideas, their Hallows. (All he’d have to have done was accept Gellert’s letter).

This would have been a Spring wedding. Early Spring, when the wind still danced with the Northern chill. Although late enough it would still bring life, and colour into the world. Just like their meeting would have been; cold with the things that they didn’t say, but new growth beginning to take over the dead and abandoned places. However, Albus thought, it would only cover the errors with flowers and other precious things. It wouldn’t be the truth. Just a covered up version of the reality. 

Spring had always been one of his favourite seasons, it wasn’t blinding like Summer, you could stare and observe all you wanted. (That’s why there was flowers, to draw you away from anything undesirable). It was the time of growth and rebirth. And just like the flowers, and the world around them, they would have bloomed, grown into and filled the holes left by their youth. 

But he hadn’t accepted the offer, and the meeting was left as a what if. There was no Spring wedding, and the flowers would grow and die, and the jagged metal spikes of their affection would be left alone and untouched. (When the rain clouds rolled in, it wasn’t surprising, the freshness couldn’t be permanent. They couldn’t have been permanent…)

_Winter, 1934_

Albus wrapped the blue scarf a little tighter around his neck, slipping the ends into his coat, apparating to the Ministry as soon as he was off the grounds. Travers had been keeping him under as close a watch as he could, convinced That Albus was working in league with Ge-Grindelwald. It was ridiculous, he hadn’t even spoken with Gellert in thirty-five years. But oh, he’d been so tempted.

A Winter wedding perhaps, would have been nice. Beautiful, and contrasting so vividly with any colours. Red and gold would make the most beautiful palette, Albus in gold, with long flowing sleeves, and Gellert in red, dripping in a colour made for him. Everything would be dead and they could start anew (buried, Albus doesn’t think. Everything buried six feet under and hidden.) They could be happy, three and a half decades later, (an untold number of lies,) and somewhere away from the Summer. 

But the long sleeves would do nothing but cover the scars that they had left on each other, through proxies and spells. (And the red, just how many people had died for the Greater Good? Would the robes be dyed with blood?) Besides, chocolate and the heady heat of summer had never granted them pomegranates. Albus wasn’t Persephone, trapped, and fated to return half of the time. 

And just as Albus was not the goddess of Springtime, married to a king, with enough pomegranates to delight in, Gellert, for all the misfortune that followed him, was not Hades, and his crown of bones was too heavy for Albus to bare the weight of now. (Winter had always been too cold for a marriage anyways... ).

_Autumn, 1951_

Albus set the quill back in the ink, closing his eyes, and rubbing his temples. It had been six years since the Duel, and yet, Albus thought, as he read the single line of ink on the page, he couldn’t start this letter. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted- needed to say. They were both older now, relics of a war and a world from the early half of a century that progressed far too quickly for them to keep up. 

A marriage now would be most fitting. For the first time they would be equals in the game. Because what were they, if not dying figures for a failed revolution? Nothing, or at least nothing that mattered. And now, when the burning brightness of Summer, the whitewashed Winter, and the deceptive beauty of Spring gone, the lies and half-truths with them, Albus knew he still loved him. More than half a century since they had met, and in all that time, and all the lies and atrocities, Albus still held affection for him. (Voldemort could never hope to compare to Gellert).

But the Autumn was the meeting place where Life and Death met, though they were no longer capable of such a delicate thing, not after such an explosive parting (he remembers the Daily Prophet, one of the few colour photos. A lightshow above the trees taken at the height of their duel). They were a love story in reverse, a year told from middle to end with a shortcut through the start. And not even they could change the seasons order.

Perhaps in another universe they could be happy. In a world where the trees shed secrets in Autumn like leaves, and their courtship had begun in a time when the lights hadn’t blinded him. If he’s honest, Albus reflects, they would have been best married in Autumn. But the fates had denied them the chance (lies, they had ruined it for themselves, but it was easier to blame something else). Albus turned back to the letter, he would try another day. When he was slightly less pensieve on their shared history. Although there would be no proposal, no declaration of love, simply a bit of silence for a little bit longer, and then, maybe a tentative olive branch. An offer of intellectual stimulation because Gellert was brilliant, and it would be terrible if that were completely lost. (And if some of the plans Albus enacted to stop Tom were a little darker, a little more cutthroat than anyone would anticipate, well war changed people. No one would ever need to know that they weren’t all purely his design.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment your opinions. Give this writer some words please! (Feed me Seymour, feed me all night long.)


End file.
